Presented on Monday, November 30, 2015 in Cowles Hall on the Elmira College Campus. mark Twain has long been celebrated for his books and stories for, and about, youth. But in the past two decades, new approaches among scholars, readers, and publishers to literature written written for children have given us new lenses with which to see just how rich and forward-looking his perceptions of childhood and child-rearing in America really were.
Andrew Levy is Edna Cooper Professor of English at Butler University, where he also chairs the English Department and recently directed the MFA program. He is author of the critically acclaimed Brain Wilder Than They Sky, the award-winning biography The First Emancipator, and most recently Huck Finn's America. His essays have appeared in Harper's, American Scholar, and Best American Essays, and his work has been reviewed in Time, the New York Times, NPR, and many other national venues.